Letter to the Seattle Times about gun legislation

I am writing to provide some feedback about your opinion columns
about gun control this weekend, as well as the general tone of the
discussion. For your information, I am a moderate liberal Democrat in
most respects who also happens to be an NRA Life Member; I believe
that makes me a consistent liberal.

In general, I find the idea of firearms "discussion" in this country to be
an unfortunate oxymoron. Firearms owners possess the technical acumen
for real debate and a first person knowledge of the issues. Most gun control
advocates seem to fall more into the "guns are icky and we want all the
controls we can get" camp. Attempts to rebrand "gun control" to "gun safety"
will only have any veracity when the control side provides more data than
the equivalent of sex ed composed solely of "abstinence" instruction.
The firearms community reduced the fatal gun accident rate from 2500/year
around 1970 to about 600/year now, mostly through OUR initiative and
without significant legal requirements.

To reiterate and rephrase: we don't want to be talked at by those with no
knowledge any more than women wanted to be talked down to be
anti-choice extremists last year.

Having lived in 4 states and experienced a variety of gun controls first
hand, including their unintended consequences, I'd like to respond to
some editorials by Danny Westneat and Jenny Durkan in the Time,
this weekend.

I was most impressed by Danny Westneat's comments and I believe
that he and my representative Hope have a sincere interest in finding
intelligent discussion points. Where this breaks down is if HB 1588 includes
a requirement to record firearm type and serial numbers. A carefully
defined background check can be an excellent idea but legislation which
results in full firearms registration is unacceptable. That reading of
1588 would put it on par with California's requirement that records all
firearms transactions. This is not so much in regard to gun show transactions
as to private purchases between individuals.

An approach which could be much more acceptable to the firearms
community would be something like Iowa's pistol purchase permit,
which I experienced in the mid 1990s. It included a background check
good for a year or two pf purchases. A background check meets the
stated goals of Rep Hope, without venturing into firearms registration
territory. Another equivalent would be to exempt firearms purchases where
the purchaser possesses a valid WA state concealed pistol license.
I have personally only sold firearms to persons possessing a valid CPL,
which I believe meets my responsibility as a gun owner squarely.

I am frankly disappointed with Jenny Durkan's attempt to ingratiate
herself with the firearms community by saying "I grew up with shotguns"
and then have her go on to urge a ban on so-called "assault weapons". If Ms
Durkan grew up with guns, surely she knows that these firearms are
functionally equivalent to hunting firearms. The idea of banning rifles which are
used to kill less people than blunt objects and half the people killed with
hands and feet is patently ridiculous.

The US will never have its gun culture destroyed in the way that other
countries have. There are many millions of handguns in private hands
and tens of millions of semi-automatic rifles and normal capacity magazines
for them as well. The djinn is out of the bottle but gun rights advocates share
your concern in reducing violence.  Why not ask for our ideas?

If you ask us how instead of "splaining" to us what controls we have to
accept, we can work together to improve the situation. But we don't have
to accept any bad idea you come up with and we won't. Something like
a hundred thousand gun owners took the time to show up and protest
peacefully for our rights in state capitols around the country, two weeks
ago. We're not going anywhere.